January 29, 2010 - 2:27am
By Elizabeth Krevsky

Observant Jews in the Cornell community can finally enjoy extended freedom during the Sabbath, thanks to the official establishment of the Rabbi Morris Goldfarb Memorial Ehruv.

An ehruv — a physical structure enclosing a larger area into a single domain — enables Jews to carry items such as food, books, medicines and coats without violating the Sabbath. According to Aaron Sarna ’11, president of the Center for Jewish Living, it is forbidden in the Jewish tradition to physically carry anything between a public and private domain during the Sabbath, which begins every Friday at sundown and ends after sundown every Sunday.

By SHERI SHEFA, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 10 December 2009
TORONTO — Jewish student group leaders, rabbis and Orthodox Jewish students held a panel discussion last week to let concerned community members know that there are many opportunities available for Orthodox Jewish students on secular campuses.

Toronto’s JLIC director Rabbi Aaron Greenberg, left, and Hillel of Greater Toronto executive director Zac Kaye were two of six panelists talking last week about Orthodox Jewish students attending secular universities.

The Orthodox Union’s Heshe and Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC), a North American program that helps Orthodox students balance their Jewish upbringing with living in a secular world, in conjunction with Hillel of Greater Toronto, invited parents and university-bound students to Bnei Akiva’s Yeshivat Or Chaim for a lecture titled “Observant Jewish Life on the Secular College Campus.”

Jewish Learning Initiative turns 10
By Michael Orbach
Issue of December 4, 2009/ 17 Kislev 5770

To go or not to go is no longer the question.
“75 percent of the graduating population of the Modern Orthodox day-schools are not going to YU or Touro,” asserted Rabbi Ilan Haber, director of the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus. “The issue is not should or shouldn’t they go to secular university — they are going. The issue for us is how to help them make educated decisions to choose a college environment amenable to their growth and how to best serve their needs once they’re in the college environment.”
The Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus was founded in 2000. Rabbi Menachem Schrader, then a rebbe at Yeshivat Torat Yosef-Hamivtar in Efrat, realized that yeshivas in Israel were helping students in Israel but students in secular universities back in America had only a limited support system.

“It became clear that we were taking students from campuses all over the world, teaching them Torah and then sending them back after a year or two and there was a deep sense I had that we were sending them back to nothing,” said Rabbi Schrader, who is now the director for Nishmat. “Why shouldn’t we try to create a reference of Torah Studies for them to go back to?”

In response, Rabbi Schrader came up an idea that he hoped would allow students to continue their Jewish studies. A partnership between the Orthodox Union and the Hillel campus organization placed Orthodox couples on college campuses to supplement Hillel programming.

Press Release of Twitter Torah

Twitter Torah brings the profundity of the Torah to you in 140 character messages based around the weekly Torah portions. The book shares insights from seven unique and thoughtful people. The contributors to this book all come from different places in the Jewish community: traditional and non-traditional, men and women, Jewish professionals and lay members.

When competing with college exams, a multitude of classes and papers, and extracurricular activities including sports and internships, campus organizations need something pretty special to lure college students to a campus program. The Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) of the Orthodox Union had just that when it sponsored a six-part -Health and Halacha (Jewish law) series at Rutgers University Hillel that drew over 100 students to its various classes and lectures.

To read the original article, click here.